ST. GEORGE, Utah (CNN) -- Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for using his religious authority to push a 14-year-old girl into a marriage she did not want.

Jeffs stood with his hands folded and didn't appear to react as the verdict was read.

The counts carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. His sentencing date was not immediately known.

The five women and three men returned the verdict shortly after 4 p.m. ET following two tumultuous days of deliberations.

Jeffs , 51, is president and "prophet" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect, based in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, claims some 10,000 members.

Prosecutors charged Jeffs pressured a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin despite her objections. He had been a school headmaster and was the son of the sect's previous prophet, Rulon Jeffs, who died in 2002.

The defense said authorities were persecuting Jeffs because of his religious beliefs, which include practicing plural marriage as the way to heaven. "His church, his religious beliefs is what's on trial here, and it's being dressed up as a rape," attorney Walter Bugden argued.

The case went to the jury Friday, following five days of testimony. The key witnesses were the reluctant child bride, Elissa Wall, and her husband in the arranged "spiritual" marriage, Allen Steed.

The two witnesses -- she testifying for the prosecution, he for the defense -- gave conflicting accounts of Jeffs' influence over them and their 2001 marriage. Jeffs performed the wedding ceremony in a Caliente, Nevada, motel room.

"Warren Jeffs told them to go forward and multiply and replenish the Earth, and that is why that man is an accomplice to rape," prosecutor Brock Belnap told jurors in his closing argument.

Wall spent three days on the stand, frequently sobbing as she described how she felt trapped in a marriage she did not want, to a man she did not like.

She said she repeatedly told Jeffs that she did not want to be married and was uncomfortable with her new husband's sexual advances. Jeffs advised her to pray and to submit to her husband, learn to love him, and bear his children -- or risk losing her "eternal salvation," she said.

She said she initially avoided her husband, hiding in her mother's bedroom. She testified she finally had sex several weeks into her marriage after Steed told her "it was time to be a wife and do your duty."

Afterward, she said, she hid in a bathroom, feeling "dirty and used."

She initially was referred to as "Jane Doe" to protect her privacy because of the sexual nature of the charges. But after the jury received the case, her lawyers released her name to the public.

Steed, who has not been charged with a crime, denied forcing himself on his bride, saying she initiated their first sexual encounter. He said she was nice to him in private, but cold in public.

He said Jeffs counseled them to learn to love each other. Steed cried on the stand as he described his frustration at being rejected.

The 3½-year marriage ended in 2004, after she became pregnant with another man's child. She left the church and is remarried.

Judge James Shumate instructed jurors that under Utah law, a 14-year-old can consent to sex in some circumstances. But there can be no consent, the judge said, if a person under 18 is coerced by someone at least three years older.

Someone can be found guilty if he or she holds a position of "special trust" over another person under 18, the judge instructed.

Jeffs also is facing multiple counts in Arizona of being an accomplice to incest and sex with minors.

He has drawn attention to the polygamous FLDS by allegedly excommunicating male followers and reassigning wives and children, arranging marriages to girls as young as 13, and reducing competition for brides by exiling male teens and young men.

One concern I had about his case was that they got him because the girl was 14. Had she been 15, he would have gotten away with this.